Thoughts on a S&W 4043

This is a discussion on Thoughts on a S&W 4043 within the Defensive Carry Guns forums, part of the Defensive Carry Discussions category; Anyone own one or have experience with them?
Price/value in today's market?
Most common use of this firearm?...

I have several 3rd gen smiths. The 40xx series were one of the first 40S&W guns made for the rounds. There are many police agencies that still use them for duty use including CHP.

Rock solid guns and the 3 on the end means it has a aluminum frame so lighter weight and xx4x means DAO. I have a 6946 was my first carry gun and it's DAO trigger is long but very good. It has over 8000 trouble free rounds down range.

Be aware that the alloy-framed .40s won't stand up to a lot of shooting. The design of this pistol is such that the steel barrel and integral locking block slams into the frame each time the pistol fires. With an all-steel gun, or one in a less... aggressive... caliber, this normally isn't an issue. But several police agencies (Memphis PD for sure, a few others I heard about) dumped their alloy-framed .40 3rd gen S&Ws because of frame cracks.

The FBI reported the same problem with 1st gen M-59s back in the 80s... but the round count was like 10K or so before it started happening. The Memphis PD FTU guy I spoke with in 2005 or 2006 said their 4053s started cracking frames at less than two thousand rounds. These guns were all over the used market for a while; big re-sellers like Bud's and CDNN had quite a few of them. A pal was interested in getting one and asked me about it; that's how I got involved.

The 3rd gen pistols are okay; overly complex by today's standards, but okay. The local large PD here issued 4046s for several years. They didn't have any cracking problems because of the all-steel construction (and those guns weigh a TON), but they kept breaking trigger bars and finally went to Glocks.

We had several hundred of the 9mm s in service; mainly 5906, with a smattering of other variants. They were solid, dependable pistols... for the most part.

But the .40 S&W cartridge is hard on guns. The S&W alloy frame simply will not handle large doses of it.